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Immigration says 659 kids in detention

Peter Trute

Australia is holding 659 children in immigration detention, the human rights commission has heard.

Department of Immigration and Border Protection secretary Martin Bowles told a national inquiry the number of children being held in detention centres in Australia and offshore had fallen by more than 1330 since hitting a peak of 1992 in July, 2013.

Mr Bowles said the number of children being held at the Christmas Island detention centre was now 153, down by more than 530 in the past year.

Some of those children had been transferred to Nauru, where there were now 185 children being held.

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Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) president Gillian Triggs asked Mr Bowles if he was being "straight forward with the Australian public" in stating numbers on Christmas Island were being reduced if children had simply been transferred to Nauru.

Mr Bowles responded that there had been a "significant and considerable decrease" in numbers of children being held.

"I reject the imputation that we are either misleading or lying to anybody in relation to the reduction of children in detention," he told the inquiry in Sydney on Thursday.

The commission heard there are about 37 children among the 157 Sri Lankan asylum seekers recently transferred to the Curtin detention centre in Western Australia.

Counsel assisting the inquiry Naomi Sharp asked Mr Bowles if he could confirm there were babies among those children.

Mr Bowles that he could not confirm there were babies without having confirmed the "biodata" from assessment of the group, but said there were small children.

In a statement to the inquiry Mr Bowles rejected claims made in the media about poor health care standards at the Christmas Island detention centre, saying the claims "offend greatly" staff working at the centre.

Mr Bowles said healthcare services on Christmas Island were "commensurate with those available to the Australian community".

Mr Bowles said he would make no comments on Nauru as the scope of the commission extended only to onshore detention centres.

Prof Triggs announced that Immigration Minister Scott Morrison had agreed to appear before the inquiry.

She said Mr Morrison had declined to appear on Thursday because of the current legal proceedings surrounding the 157 Sri Lankan asylum seekers.

No date has yet been set for the minister's appearance.

The AHRC national inquiry into the health and well-being of children in immigration detention continues.

A spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Scott Morrison said the government would cooperate with the inquiry.

"More importantly the government will continue to reduce the number of children in detention as we have been doing since the day we were elected," she said in a statement on Thursday.

The number of children in detention had fallen by almost 35 per cent since the September election.